


Not in the Stars to Hold Our Destiny (But Ourselves)

by rosewiththorns



Series: A Star is Born [4]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Being an All-Star, Destiny, Detroit Red Wings, Discipline, Gen, Kneeling, Kneeling Universe, M/M, Non-Sexual Submission, mentoring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 15:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4710623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosewiththorns/pseuds/rosewiththorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brett assures Pavel that it is good to let himself shine and reminds him to live in the moment where he controls his own destiny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not in the Stars to Hold Our Destiny (But Ourselves)

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set after the All-Star game in 2004 and marks the end of this series (or at least all that I have planned for it right now). Since this is the conclusion of the series, I once again thank everyone who has read and commented on it while it was in progress. All feedback was appreciated, and acting upon some kind suggestions from reviewers, I did some research into common mistakes Russians make when speaking English, so hopefully that makes Pavel's accent a bit more authentic.

“It’s not in the stars to hold our destiny but ourselves.”—William Shakespeare

Not in the Stars to Hold Our Destiny (But in Ourselves) 

“How are you feeling, kid?” Brett rumpled Pavel’s hair as he knelt before him, hoping that the teasing gesture might cause Pavel’s cheeks to crack in a lopsided grin, but Pavel’s expression remained as woeful as a schoolboy’s when staring at a giant red (or whatever cheerier color educators were now using in a misguided attempt to turn flunking into a positive experience) F. Failure looked the same whether it was written in flesh or ink. 

“I feel normal, thank you.” Pavel shrugged shoulders Brett’s hands had drifted down to massage the knots out of, and Brett thought Pavel had to be really rattled if he was confusing “normal” with “fine” when he hadn’t made that mistake in months. 

“You’re not normal.” Brett tried to get Pavel to relax by chuckling, but he only felt Pavel’s shoulders tighten further under his palms as he laughed. “You’re an All-Star. That’s anything but normal, Pav.” 

“I not enough good to be an All-Star, Brett.” Pavel shook his head, and Brett winced internally, because the more Pavel’s sentences were run through a Syntax Scrambler, the more jumbled his mental and emotional state tended to be. “Not really.” 

“You’re good enough to be an All-Star.” Brett gave Pavel’s shoulders a slight, scolding shake. “Believe that, because as soon as you don’t, that’s when all your problems start.” 

“Sorry for being shy and nervous at All-Star game.” Pavel gazed up at Brett with eyes sad and wide as mud puddles, as if trying to discern whether Brett was cross about his tentative performance at the All-Star game, but Brett wasn’t, since he had predicted that Pavel might be reluctant to show-off in front of the whole hockey world. That was Pavel to a T: content to defer to others and dodging the spotlight as much as possible. “I didn’t want to do a mistake.” 

“That’s not the only reason you were modest as a daffodil,” pointed out Brett, tapping Pavel’s nose. “You also didn’t want to look like a show-off with a stuck-up nose in front of everybody, did you?” 

“Yes, not want to show-off,” agreed Pavel, biting his lip like bubblegum. “Brett, mad?” 

“No, I’m not mad.” Reassuring Pavel as he almost always did in response to that sheepish question, Brett squeezed Pavel’s shoulder. “I figured you would feel like that, kid, but you’ve got to understand that doing your best at an All-Star game isn’t being a show-off, okay? It’s giving the audience a gift, since you’re the most entertaining hockey player in the world.” 

“You think Coach mad at me?” Pavel’s neck drooped like a shriveled petal on a dying flower. “Because I not do my best at All-Star game?” 

“Don’t make me break a rib laughing, Pav.” Brett snickered, quipping inwardly that if Scotty Bowman was a steel bar, then Dave Lewis was a Hershey bar left out all day when it was a sweltering ninety degrees in the shade. “Coach is never mad at anyone. If he were any softer, he’d be a walking, talking marshmallow.” 

“At practice there, he say to me that not my shot and I not myself.” Pavel’s hands flew about like startled birds before perching on Brett’s knees. “He was losing patience with me.” 

“That’s because he didn’t want you trying so damn hard to blend in when you were born to stand out.” Brett stroked the nape of Pavel’s slumped neck. “He knows that you’re a star who needs to shine, not hide your own light under a fucking bushel. Light is meant to be seen, Pav. Remember that.” 

“All the time, you give me good advices.” Pavel’s voice was little more than a whisper against Brett’s knee, and Brett beamed indulgently at the plural that should have been a singular, supposing that this was how adoring parents didn’t correct cute grammatical errors in young children, instead leaving them for a teacher to sort out in Kindergarten, except Kindergarten was not coming to fix Pavel’s English, which might remain marvelously mangled for as long as he played in the NHL. “I can’t pay you back, Brett.” 

“Bullshit.” Brett snorted, cuffing Pavel on the back. “Every day you pay me back because I’m slowing down and you keep my stats looking sweet.” 

“You give me points, too.” Stubborn as dog dung affixed to a shoe sole, Pavel’s chin lifted. “We even in that, so I still owe you.” 

“Fine.” Brett raised his palms in a symbol of surrender as universal as a waving white flag. “When you get to be old and slow as molasses like me, you can help another young star realize it’s okay for him to shine. Fair?”

“Very for me.” Pavel’s shifty smile and gleaming eyes made him resemble nothing so much as an imp. “Because I never grow old and slow.” 

“Oh, really, kid?” Brett arched an eyebrow. “How the hell do you plan to march in the opposite direction as Father Time, huh?” 

“Change my ID.” Pavel was utterly deadpan. “Or use time machine. I pick easier one.” 

“Definitely the time machine.” Brett decided to provide a demonstration of his own dry wit. “Just travel to England and hop into one of their phone booths. That’s all you have to do. I know because I saw Dr. Who.” 

“If I did find a time machine—“ Pavel had changed from mischievous to serious in little more than a minute, but it wasn’t unusual for him to break land-speed records shifting gears from playful to pensive—“in future I would use it to travel back to now.” 

“Me too, Pav.” Brett nodded, because this was the kind of moment—filled with the peace of the past and the promise of the future—that you dreamed of returning to a million times once it had faded in the rearview on the ride of your life, where inertia always made time gather speed as you aged in a sensation much like going downhill. “But until you find a time machine, you’ve got to promise me that you’ll live in each moment—not the past or the future—because that is where you make your own destiny.” 

“Promise. Cross heart and hope to die.” Pavel sketched an X across his chest in invisible ink, and Brett could feel like a pulse thudding in his veins that for both of them the past was immutable and the future unknowable, but their eternity was in each heartbeat.


End file.
